During the 1990's (and part of the 80's), Organ donation was an important topic on the british public debate. On those years there were plenty of advances, like the liver transplant to kids Matthew Whittaker and Ben Hardwick (respectively 1984 and 1985), or the creation of the National Organ Donor Database on 1994. However there was also plenty of controversy around those years, with many people criticising the relationship between media and medicine on those years, arguing that many journalists became "recruitment officials for organ donors". However, the most controversial aspect was the existence of an organ trade between Britain and poorer nations, exemplified on a report of 1994, that exposed people from Madras and Bombay selling their organds to British patients for 200 GBP, while the middlemen of the deal was getting up to 12,000 GBP.

Considering that one of the main aspects of the novel, is that the protagonists are clones created for eventually donate their organs to other people (specially from high social classes), its easy to notice that this controversy had some influence on the novel. Ishiguro may not have based on a specific case, but the fact that by the time he published his novel, organ donation was a constant on public debate for almost 20 years and the controversies related with it were particularly scandalous, it should be safe to say that there were some influence, and that the aspect of organ harvesting (basically the function of the clones on the story), was some sort of critic to this phenomena and particularly to the controversy of the organ trade with poorer countries.

Sources:

HRW. (1994). China: Organ Procurement and Judicuial Execution in China. Human Rights Watch. Vol.6, no.9. Recovered from: https://www.hrw.org/reports/1994/china1/china_948.htm

NHS History. Organ Donation, A Cultural History. People History of the NHS. Website: Organ Donation, a cultural history – People's History of the NHS

Picture by DailyMail.